Archive: December 1st, 2006
This is a band out of the UK called Slainte. I have no idea what the name of the song is but I like the Celtic sounds. I Love bagpipes!
 Wondering where to shop for Christmas gifts? Well, Jerry Falwell has taken some of the stress away by compiling a list of businesses that openly celebrate CHRISTmas, which are labeled Nice, and those that do not are, of course, Naughty.
My browser has its limits and visiting The Liberty Council site is one of them, but, luckily, Pam at musingsofaworkingmom has done the nasty for us in a wonderful post titled Help Save Christmas where you will find not only her delightful wit but the Naughty ‘N Nice (or Nice ‘N Naughty, which I prefer) list.
If you are looking for unique and affordable gifts that bring benefit to both the receiver and the giver, two suggestions:
Heifer International
Syracuse Cultural Workers, Tools For Change
Yikes…….
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hundreds of thousands of protesters from Hezbollah and its pro-Syrian allies massed Friday in downtown Beirut seeking to force the resignation of Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, who was holed up in his office ringed by hundreds of police and combat troops.
The protest, which police estimated at 800,000, created a sea of Lebanese flags that blanketed downtown and spilled onto the surrounding streets. Hezbollah officials put the number at 1 million - one-fourth of Lebanon’s population.
“Saniora out! We want a free government!” protesters shouted through loudspeakers. The crowd roared in approval amid the deafening sound of Hezbollah revolutionary and nationalist songs. “We want a clean government,” read one placard, in what has become the opposition’s motto.
More at YahooNews
H/T Fade for posting this link in comments!
Message To West Point
Bill Moyers
November 29, 2006
This is an excerpt from the Sol Feinstone Lecture on The Meaning of Freedom delivered by Bill Moyers at the United States Military Academy on November 15, 2006.
Many of you will be heading for Iraq. I have never been a soldier myself, never been tested under fire, never faced hard choices between duty and feeling, or duty and conscience, under deadly circumstances. I will never know if I have the courage to be shot at, or to shoot back, or the discipline to do my duty knowing the people who dispatched me to kill-or be killed-had no idea of the moral abyss into which they were plunging me.
I have tried to learn about war from those who know it best: veterans, the real experts. But they have been such reluctant reporters of the experience. My father-in-law, Joe Davidson, was 37 years old with two young daughters when war came in 1941; he enlisted and served in the Pacific but I never succeeded in getting him to describe what it was like to be in harm’s way. My uncle came home from the Pacific after his ship had been sunk, taking many friends down with it, and he would look away and change the subject when I asked him about it. One of my dearest friends, who died this year at 90, returned from combat in Europe as if he had taken a vow of silence about the dark and terrifying things that came home with him, uninvited.
Curious about this, some years ago I produced for PBS a documentary called “D-Day to the Rhine.” With a camera crew I accompanied several veterans of World War II who for the first time were returning together to the path of combat that carried them from the landing at Normandy in 1944 into the heart of Germany. Members of their families were along this time-wives, grown sons and daughters-and they told me that until now, on this trip-45 years after D-Day-their husbands and fathers rarely talked about their combat experiences. They had come home, locked their memories in their mind’s attic, and hung a “no trespassing” sign on it. Even as they retraced their steps almost half a century later, I would find these aging GIs, standing alone and silent on the very spot where a buddy had been killed, or they themselves had killed, or where they had been taken prisoner, a German soldier standing over them with a Mauser pointed right between their eyes, saying: “For you, the war is over.” As they tried to tell the story, the words choked in their throats. The stench, the vomit, the blood, the fear: What outsider-journalist or kin-could imagine the demons still at war in their heads?
Continue reading here
Nigeria, the fifth-largest source of U.S. imported oil, is falling apart and will likely require intervention by the U.S. government and the Navy in particular, according to Michael Vlahos, a national security analyst with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
As it struggles with separatist unrest, Nigeria is “a place that we-re going to be hearing a lot about in a year,” he said Nov. 16 during a colloquium at the university.
“The situation in Nigeria is literally coming apart,” Vlahos told the audience. “It’s a country that makes Iraq look simple and doable.” As Nigeria falls apart, people in the United States are going to become increasingly aware of its role as a U.S. oil supplier, he said.
“And the place is just unspeakable,” he said. “And how we go in there and what we do there . . . it won-t work unless we have special capabilities.”
Secret assessments prepared for oil companies have concluded the companies will not be able to operate in Nigeria after about two years because they have “screwed things up so bad,” he said.
More at Military.com
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a top Iraqi Shiite leader with close ties to Iran, will travel soon to Washington to meet with President Bush, the White House confirmed Friday.
Al-Hakim leads the powerful Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a rival group to the political movement led by firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the meeting was set for Monday.
“President Bush looks forward to an exchange of views and a discussion of important issues facing Iraq today,” Johndroe said.
The visit comes against a backdrop of deadly Sunni-Shiite sectarian warfare in Iraq that has led some observers to say a civil war has engulfed the country.
More at CNN.com
A large number of members of Congress in Mexico continue to believe that the President elect won illegally.
This is beyond unacceptable. Kudos to Hillary for calling for an investigation. This is probably just one of hundreds of returning heros who are mishandled.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) is calling on the U.S. Army to investigate an alleged case of mishandling a soldier’s casket, RAW STORY has learned.
Several witnesses at a Rochester, N.Y. airport last month saw what appeared to be the American flag-draped casket of a dead soldier transported down an airline conveyer belt and onto a baggage-toting vehicle. According to a report by a local TV news station, the remains are “believed to be [that] of Army Sgt. First Class Tony Knier, who was killed in Iraq on October 21.” The casket was apparently escorted by a lone soldier, standing at attention.
More at Raw Story
Forget the Iraq Study Group and its much-anticipated report on what to do in Iraq. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the State Department has figured out what’s needed to improve the situation: the Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program (IYLEP).
The idea is to pick 20 to 100 Iraqi high school kids and bring them to the United States for a month next summer “to learn about the U.S., to develop their leadership skills, and to develop friendships,” according to a “funding opportunity” announcement. How big an opportunity? How about $2.3 million and change?
More at the Washington Post
By Stephen Barr
Friday, December 1, 2006; Page D04
About 1.8 million federal employees would receive a 1.7 percent increase in their basic pay and a 0.5 percent average increase in their locality pay next year under a plan that President Bush sent to Congress yesterday, administration officials said.
Bush recommended a 2.2 percent average raise in his fiscal 2007 budget, released in February. Under a 1990 pay law, yesterday was the deadline for the president to authorize an alternative plan if Congress had not stipulated a raise.
If federal employees receive an average raise of 2.2 percent next year, it would be their lowest annual salary increase in 18 years, according to congressional aides.
Full story at the Washington Post
Around forty million people are living with HIV throughout the world - and that number increases in every region every day. In the UK alone, more than 60,000 people are living with HIV and more than 7,000 more are diagnosed every year. Ignorance and prejudice are fuelling the spread of a preventable disease.
World AIDS Day, 1 December is an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV and AIDS. This year, it’s up to you, me and us to stop the spread of HIV and end prejudice.
World AIDS Campaign, with the support of UNAIDS, facilitates the international theme for World AIDS Day, which this year is Stop AIDS, Keep the Promise. Visit the World AIDS Campaign to post events or to find out what is happening outside the UK.
From Yahoo News:
GENEVA (Reuters) - Surveillance for the HIV virus is weak in most of the world and prevention and treatment programs often fail to reach high-risk drug users, homosexuals and sex workers, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
In a message marking World AIDS Day, being celebrated under the theme of Accountability, the WHO’s acting director-general Anders Nordstrom said that tackling the AIDS epidemic remained one of the world’s most pressing public health challenges.
Only 1.6 million people or 24 percent of the 6.8 million people worldwide who need the life-extending therapy receive it, according to the latest joint report of UNAIDS and the WHO.
This Dobbs clip brings up the new North American common currency called the “Amero“. The 2006 NAU progress report states that everything is ontrack for the Union to go into effect in 2010.
Dobbs states that this government is not Bush’s government and that this North American union will be an Orwellian Brave New World.
Senators vote to raise minimum wage and their own salaries
CHRISTOPHER WILLS
Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - The state Senate sent legislation to the governor Thursday that would increase the state minimum wage by $1, giving raises to hundreds of thousands of Illinois workers.
Senators also voted to raise their own salaries and those of other top state officials by 15.6 percent. That still needs House approval, however.
Under the minimum wage legislation, Illinois businesses would be required to pay most workers at least $7.50 an hour beginning July 1, 2007. That would be followed by three 25-cent increases, bringing the minimum to $8.25 an hour in 2010.
…
At $7.50 an hour, that worker would make $15,600. At $8.25, the total reaches $17,160.
The Senate also considered legislation adding $4.8 million to the state budget for cost-of-living increases for lawmakers, the governor and other top state officials. They have not had an increase since 2001.
A lawmaker’s base pay of $57,619 would climb to about $68,800. The governor’s salary of $150,700 would jump to $174,200, although Blagojevich says he will turn down his raise.
The measure passed 37-19 and now goes to the House.
Link
“Cost-of-living” is a term many of the hard-working American poor are probably not too familiar with. Amazing how politicians all over the country cringe upon hearing it uttered, EXCEPT when they use it to justify their own pay increases.
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